Ron's Confession
by Diane Langley
Summary: “So, I’ve got a confession for you. It’s going to confuse you and surprise you, and you’re going to hate every word of it, but I want you to listen...”  [ONESHOT]


**Author's Note:** I took a challenge to write on this pairing, and I don't shirk from challenges, but I'm not loving enough to write a sweet fic on it, so here's something stark and slightly alternate universe. Disregard anything in the novels from after the kiss in OotP and on. Enjoy…

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So, I've got a confession for you. It's going to confuse you and surprise you, and you're going to hate every word of it, but I want you to listen to every bit of it before you walk away from me…

I want desperately to tell you that the first time was an accident. I want to say, "Hey, I was drunk, and things got out of hand," or "It just happened; I don't know what I was thinking!". But saying either of those things would be a lie, and I can't lie to you in my confession. I've lied to you for so long, so many times, in so many different ways, that it usually is really easy to lie to you at this point, but even I, with all my lying experience, can't lie to you in the middle of a confession about lying to you.

Sure, it would soften the blow. It would soften the blow a whole lot. But I'm not going to do it. So, I'm going to start off with the truth.

The first time I slept with Cho wasn't an accident.

I don't exactly know what set it all in motion. That much is true. I know that we were standing there; you were talking, being very noble and valiant and honorable, like always. Really, I think you were just talking about a homework assignment or something, but I don't actually remember. It wasn't some magical moment where we looked at each other and I suddenly had memorized the smell of her hair or the color of her eyes. Actually, I still don't know the color of her eyes. They're brown, I guess.

Anyway, whatever you were talking about, it was pretty mundane, but you were managing to sound heroic in the process. You had the attention of the people in the corridor who you were actually talking to, but you also had the attention of other people, too. You've always been good at that. You can just get everybody's attention by breathing. I feel like I have to stand on my head and sing opera just to get a real glance in my direction. You tend to have the attention of anyone who might otherwise be giving me attention.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a kid anymore, and I don't mind. I'm a married man, a happily married man, and I have the full attention of my wife and kids, so I don't really desire the attention of random onlookers anymore. I'm pretty settled to just let you have that at this point, but at the time, it used to really piss me off that you were everybody's hero, the star of every show, etc.

I think that's why, when I was standing there and Cho Chang slipped a note into my hand that had your name written on the outside, I told you I was going to the bathroom and kept the note. I should have given it to you. In light of this whole confession, that probably sounds pretty minor, and I'll admit that it is really minor on the whole, but still, I should have given you the note.

I read it. She has awful writing for a girl, you know. Usually, they have pretty good writing, but hers is just awful. I had to squint and reread it about six times before I could figure out what it said.

"_Harry, please meet me in the Astronomy Tower tonight after supper. XOXO, Cho."_

It was a pretty lame note, right? I expected something slightly more ardent from a pair that had been together since fifth year. She didn't even sign it with love. I found out later that you were apparently not really a dream come true as a boyfriend. I honestly think she liked the status of being Harry Potter's girlfriend, and if the truth's come out, I think you just liked having a girlfriend and that any pretty girl was suitable in that respect. You are probably offended by that, since that wouldn't be very noble, would it? But the truth isn't always noble.

I headed up the stairs to the tower with no idea what I was doing. I was especially at a loss when I saw Cho standing there already. She looked a lot better not wrapped under your arm, and she was wearing a school sweater that was definitely a size too small. I found it a bit hard to stammer out why I was there under the circumstances.

Instead of looking furious, she sat down and sighed and started to grumble about you. I remembered how you used to hate it when she would talk about Cedric at the beginning of your relationship, and maybe it will comfort you to know that at the beginning of our relationship, you were all we talked about.

I guess I was sick of being overshadowed by you, and I think she was sick of being underappreciated by you, and the result was that we built a pretty firm foundation for us on a resentment of you. We could gripe about you, swap stories about you, and by the end, we always ended up talking about how much you actually meant to us. You really are my best friend, and she really did love you. It was pretty twisted of us to get together to gripe about you, but at first, it seemed innocent. We knew we were sneaking around behind your back, but we weren't doing anything, just talking, not flirting or anything.

So, it went on for a while. After Hogwarts, we would meet for coffee on Wednesday mornings. She always put way more sugar into her coffee than I did, but then she would insist I finish hers when she couldn't. It was really annoying. I used to wonder if she did the same thing to you, and if so, how did you stand it? But, I guess, you stood it the same way I did; you learned to ignore it.

One week, you went to Ireland with the Ministry, as you know. Well, that Monday, I got a call from Cho, and we ate dinner at her flat. She really, really wanted you to propose when you got back. She felt like you two had reached that point. You hadn't said a word to me about marriage, and I figured you would have mentioned it if you were planning on popping the question. I said I hadn't heard anything about it, and she freaked out. She started sobbing, and she tossed herself on me.

I am not the kind of guy who has sex with his best mate's girl on purpose. At nineteen, I wasn't the kind of guy who had sex with anybody. But, well, yeah, anyway… You know how Cho cried through your first kiss? Well, I'd much rather she had just cried through our first kiss and not the entire first time we had sex. It was awful. It was my first time, not that I was going to admit that to her, and she was crying and undressing us both and moaning but not in a particularly pleasant way. It was moaning like she was trying to stop sobbing and couldn't quite manage it. Worse than the tears and the moaning, though, was that every second or so, right until it was over, she said, "I want to marry Harry."

Even though I had no intent to have sex with your girlfriend, I did, and I wasn't particularly happy about her using your name the whole time. It was downright embarrassing, especially afterward when she had the good taste to inform me that she had changed the sheets since you left that morning. I wasn't exactly grossed out, but I kind of was. I'm okay with some sharing, but I had definitely crossed the line into way too much sharing.

And I crossed that line again and again that week, and when you got back, I thought we'd stop crossing that line. Nope, we went right on. It got better, but I can honestly say, it never got great. So, if you and Cho ever had great sex, then you have she and I beat.

Eventually, it was just how things went. We would sit and talk about you, and then we would go and have sex. Luckily, after that first time, she didn't mention you while she moaned and squirmed. She probably thought of you, but she didn't say anything about you, which was good.

I could talk in more detail about various stuff over the years, but it would be pointless. Our relationship didn't vary any. Talking about you and then some sex. That was it, nothing any deeper. I sincerely don't know why neither of us stopped, but we didn't. I got married. You two got married. A couple of kids later for both of us, and still, we were getting together to have mediocre conversation and mediocre sex. I'm assuming her kids are all yours. We had real fear that one was going to pop out with red hair, but they all ended up with dark hair. I don't know if their hair is like yours or like hers, but it's not like mine, so it's okay. I'm probably just their godfather, not their real father.

You're probably wondering why I'm confessing now that she's gone. I thought long and hard about it. I couldn't decide if it was wrong to mess up your opinions of her or not. That didn't seem to fair to her. But you mean a lot more to me than she ever did, so I decided to confess, since it was hard to watch you grieving.

So, after you tuck your kids in tonight and they're done telling you how much they miss Mummy and you have to crawl into bed alone, you have something to do besides grieve. You can be mad at her, you can be mad at me, you can hate everything we did, but you won't have to grieve anymore.

More important than stopping the grieving, though, I just wanted to tell you because she's dead now and it's over, and so even though I never made the choice to stop, now I've made one choice that's totally loyal.

It was honor her, or tell you the truth. It would have been noble and valiant to honor her. You would have honored her.

But even though I haven't been an honest person, I'm even less noble and valiant, so now I've told you the truth.

I'm done confessing, Harry. You can walk away now.

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**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter.

**Author's Note II: **Odd fic, I know. But I enjoyed writing it. It didn't take long, and it got my juices flowing for jumping onto something else. Possibly updating my chaptered story. Please review.


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